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Climate, conflict, and social stability: what does the evidence say?
Open accessAbstract
Are violent conflict and socio-political stability associated with changes in climatological variables? We examine 50 rigorous quantitative studies on this question and find consistent support for a causal association between climatological changes and various conflict outcomes, at spatial scales ranging from individual buildings to the entire globe and at temporal scales ranging from an anomalous hour to an anomalous millennium. Multiple mechanisms that could explain this association have been proposed and are sometimes supported by findings, but the literature is currently unable to decisively exclude any proposed pathway. Several mechanisms likely contribute to the outcomes that we observe.
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“The findings connected climate and crop failure to population decay and war.75,76”
From Climate change and Chinese history: a review of trends, topics, and methods (2015) · cites this paper as [75]
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Metadata
- Authors
- Hsiang, S. M., & Burke, M.
- Affiliations
- National Bureau of Economic Research (US)
- University of California, Berkeley (US)
- Corresponding author
- Hsiang, Solomon M.
- Venue
- Climatic Change
- Published
- 2013-10-17
- Volume
- 123
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 39-55
- ISSN
- 0165-0009 (ISSN-L)
- 1573-1480
- OpenAlex
- W2137983397
- Cited by
- 342
- References
- 82
- Citations by year
- 2026: 12 · 2025: 22 · 2024: 30 · 2023: 22 · 2022: 26 · 2021: 35 · 2020: 28 · 2019: 24 · 2018: 33 · 2017: 53 · 2016: 18 · 2015: 15 · 2014: 18 · 2013: 4
- FWCI
- 56.58
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by
- Locations
- Climatic Change (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- SSRN Electronic Journal (acceptedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation
- U.S. Department of Energy
- Department of Energy and Climate Change
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Transboundary Water Resource Management
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Political Conflict and Governance
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Climate Change Policy and Economics
- Keywords
- climate change, violent conflict, socio-political stability, climate-conflict nexus, causal mechanisms, social stability
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